Medical nemesis : the expropriation of health

"The medical establishment has become a major threat to health." with this opening assertion, Ivan Illich - one of the most brilliant social critics of our time - launches a devastating analysis into "iatrogenesis" (doctor-made illness), examing what medicine really does, as opposed to the myth that has been built around it. "Medical Nemesis" poses some basic questions not only about the medical profession but about the direction of modern society and its dependence upon a maintainence system that is categorically robbing us of power, money, dignity - even life itself. "The medical establishment has become a major threat to health. The disabling impact of professional control over medicine has reached the proportions of an epidemic. Iatrogenesis, the name for this new epidemic, comes from iatros, the Greek word for physician, and genesis, meaning origin. Discussion of the disease of medical progress has moved up on the agendas of medical conferences, researchers concentrate on the sick-making powers of diagnosis and therapy, and reports on paradoxical damage caused by cures for sickness take up increasing space in medical dope-sheets ... The public has been alerted to the perplexity and uncertainty of the best among its hygienic caretakers ... This book argues that panic is out of place. Thoughtful public discussion of the iatrogenic pandemic, beginning with an insistence upon demystification of all medical matters, will not be dangerous to the commonweal."--Introduction.